All Rise...

Editor's Note

The Charge

A humorous look at how General Motors destroyed Flint, Michigan.

Opening Statement

For the few people left in the world that are unaware of Michael Moore, the
blue-collar everyman activist extraordinaire, Roger & Me is an
excellent introduction. Smart, witty, downright harsh, and at times, even cruel,
Moore points the camera at the economic downfall of Flint, Michigan, bravely
taking in all the devastation, poverty, and despair, while at the same time
comically trying to chase down the general manager of General Motors over a
three-year period.

The chaos thus becomes a movie, and a darn good one at that.

Facts of the Case

Roger & Me, Moore's first film, was made back in 1989, and is a
daring piece of low-budget workingman filmmaking. For example: when he started
the movie, Moore was on unemployment insurance, funding the project with
government checks totaling $99 a week. This is blue-collar credibility.

In the 1980s, Flint, Michigan, was a beacon of economic prosperity in
America—employment was high, demand for automobiles was high, and General
Motors blanketed the town in its warm corporate embrace. This was the American
Dream: everybody worked hard, and everyone was rewarded as the company
succeeded. And succeed it did—GM was posting record profits, and all was
well in the world.

Then, suddenly, GM announced that they would be closing down the Flint
operations, moving the factories to Mexico, and hiring a completely new
workforce, citing economic factors and competitive pressure—all the while
posting record profits. At the time, GM was the wealthiest company in all
America.

The effect on Flint, Michigan, was disastrous.

The film covers the entire decade of the 1980s in Flint, Michigan, as Moore
explores the ramifications of GM's economic decision to pull out of
Flint—which is Moore's hometown. By 1989, 50% of Flint's GM workforce was
unemployed, causing a level of unemployment in the city unprecedented in
American history.

Entire sections of the city remain abandoned, fled after crushing economic
depression and poverty overtook the city like a tidal wave, giving the
impression of an eerie ghost town as citizens packed up and moved
elsewhere—a city abandoned by the masses.

Consistently ranked in polls as "the worst city in America," with
an astonishing level of unemployment, Flint's violent crime rate surpassed Miami
and became the highest in all of America.

In Roger & Me, Moore takes his cameras to the streets, talking to
people, recording the abandoned streets, chronicling the life and times of Flint
as a town and as an organic entity—its people struggling to come to the
realization that the corporate blanket that had provided prosperity and security
to each of its citizens was suddenly gone, and would never come back.

The Evidence

More about the town itself than about any one person, or entity, or company,
Roger & Me speaks to the tragic injustice of Flint as a whole, rather
than simply muckraking and attacking a large corporation. Certainly, Moore has
strong feelings on the subject, and the liberal ideologies ring strong and true,
but the film spends more time exploring the town itself than it spends pointing
fingers.

Moore's aggressive, heavy-handed style of "pseudo-documentary"
narrative began its prolific rise in Roger & Me. There are few dates
in the film, which is a deliberate technique in Moore's films. Continuity is
suspended in favor of good, dramatic filmmaking.

His style has always seemed radically at odds with the documentary medium
that he works in, a main criticism of his work. However, those who disliked Bowling for Columbine may find
Roger & Me more to their liking—it is less manipulative, more
traditional in terms of style. It is an easier film to swallow, but the content
still strikes the insides just as hard.

Roger & Me is not a study in objective filmmaking, to say the
least. Targeting General Motors as the obvious culprit in Flint's economic
destruction, his mission is to coax the head of General Motors, Roger Smith, to
visit Flint and see first-hand the reality of a post-GM Flint, Michigan.

Not surprisingly, General Motors comes out looking rather bad.

One of the most dramatic and powerful scenes in the film involve a woman
selling rabbits out of her home, either as pets or as meat—your choice.
Her economic support is tied into these rabbits, stored in cages in her
backyard, and as Moore films, she clubs a rabbit to death with a pipe, hangs it
from a tree, and skins and guts it.

The montage editing is shockingly harsh and cruel at times—footage of
the GM Chairman giving Christmas salutations to his workers intertwines brutally
with the footage of a family getting violently evicted from their home on
Christmas Eve. As Roger Smith warmly gushes about man caring for his fellow man
during the holidays, the repo men toss the family's poorly decorated Christmas
tree out onto the lawn along with the presents.

Manipulative, yes; but my, oh my, terribly effective.

Moore signed his film with Warner Bros. not based on the amount of money
offered, but rather, based on other, less traditional demands—the studio
committed to show the film in 800 theatres across America. The studio agreed,
and did one better, showing it in 1,300.

Moore insisted that the families shown evicted in the films would have two
years worth of rent paid for by Warner Bros. The studio agreed.

Moore even insisted that Warner Bros. fit the bill for a quarter of a
million tickets to be pre-paid by the studio, available to anyone,
free-of-charge, upon presentation of their unemployment card.

They agreed. In fact, everything Moore asked the studio to do, they did, and
more.

The DVD commentary, done by Moore himself almost 14 years after the film was
completed, was recorded shortly after he had won the Oscar for Bowling for
Columbine—a coincidence he is more than happy to point out and chortle
over. Moore is surprisingly reserved and introspective when standing off the
soapbox, a pleasant revelation. Watching the film, he admits a grudging respect
and awe to his "opponents" in the film, admiring the brutal honesty in
those who stand in the way of his quest to meet the head boss of GM. He reflects
on how he rarely sees the same kind of harsh, open honesty that the security
guards, PR people, lobbyists, spokesman, and the like gave him almost 15 years
ago—today, everything is glossed over, every answer is smooth and
practiced and prepared. But back then, nobody saw him coming—his lack of
infamy made things a lot easier, if not more interesting, coaxing answers out of
people. What lingers in the memory are Moore's confidential, personal feelings
expressed during the commentary. Moore stops at various points to watch the
scenes from his old town, takes deep, shaky breaths, and tries to compose
himself. The site of old, familiar buildings long-since bulldozed away causes
starling moments of introspection and emotion in Moore (having not seen the film
personally in five years). There is a level of connection, of personal interest,
a genuine feeling of concern and emotion between this film and the filmmaker,
which is actually touching to witness; one feels a sense of intruding on a man's
private reflections of his life, growing up in a blue-collar community torn
asunder by white-collar business decisions that the individuals affected have no
chance of comprehending.

The visuals of the town are actually shocking in their bleakness and sheer
emptiness—one would not be surprised to see two lone gunman step out and
start shooting at one another while tumbleweeds drift by. This is the level of
desperation that is captured on film, and it is a shocking thing indeed.

Watching the film, realizing that things were indeed this grim for an entire
community in America, it is hard to accept the realization that, today, in
modern-day Flint—things are actually worse now than during the filming of
Roger & Me back in the late 1980s.

Moore laughs and tells about how people read this film today, and regard
Roger & Me fondly, actually remembering "the good old days"
where 50,000 jobs were secure in Flint, as opposed to the current 15,000.

The truth is more surreal than fiction could ever be.

Visually, the film quality is inconsistent. Rapidly changing video, film and
archival source material change the feel and tonal qualities of the film
rapidly, and make giving an overall feeling for the film difficult. Still, the
quality of the footage shot for the film himself is fairly clean and sharp,
considering its low-budget source and relative age. Terrible by modern
standards, but for a 16mm transfer—fairly respectable. Overall, the film
looks as good as can be expected.

The audio is weaker, but holds up fairly well—recorded by Moore and a
four-man crew on reel-to-reel tapes, the quality is fairly inconsistent (based
on rapidly shifting location shots, recording situations, wind, noise, and so
on) and gets pretty dreadful at times as the wind crackles and other noises
clutter the track. Overall though, the Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track is a
consistent mix, with no noticeable problems on the DVD end.

No doubt, the film has never looked or sounded better—just remember
that the film never looked and sounded good to begin with.

In perhaps the most telling revelation to illuminate the desperate situation
in Flint—at least, the most poignant and relevant observation for the sake
of this DVD review—is this, the final message of the film. As the credits
fade to black, the screen displays the following:

"This film cannot be shown within the city of Flint."

The reason? All the movie theatres there have been closed down.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Say this out loud, in your best pirate voice: "Aargh!
Full-screen?"

Full-screen modified presentations are minus points in the eyes of most DVD
reviewers. While modified aspect ratios are never preferable to the "real
thing," admittedly, given the nature of Roger & Me (recorded on
16mm, chock full of stock footage, archived video, and film clips), the
full-screen presentation leaves the visual integrity of the film relatively
intact.

This is a rare occasion where a modified full-screen presentation is
actually an acceptable way of watching a specific film; pan-and-scan is
non-existent, and one does not feel "cheated" or "ripped
off" in any way while watching Roger & Me in full screen.
Still, this is technically a modification from the original aspect ratio, and
therefore, a negative, in its very essence. Thusly, the court stenographer has
recorded this observation for the records.

Another negative: the DVD is a snap-cased bare-boned release. It feels
suspiciously rushed, more than likely thrust onto shelves after Moore hit his
Oscar high note; as a result, the disc feels fairly unimpressive in terms of
extras and film transfer—detractors draw comparison to the nearly
identical VHS release of the film, of which the DVD offers little
improvement.

Closing Statement

Despite its similarities to its VHS counterpart, Roger & Me is a
solid bargain DVD release. Its reasonable price reflects the overall quality of
the release, which is satisfactory, and frankly, the film speaks for itself; it
needs very little else to supplement it in terms of extras or other special
attention.

Okay, let me take a deep breath here:

This film is a testament to the realities of financial decisions in America,
a first-hand account of a backlash to the Industrial Revolution. Whether you
ideologically believe that large corporations have an obligation to the
community and the individual, that corporations should have a social conscious,
or whether you think Moore is an idiot; remember that Roger & Me is
screened in many economic classes at all levels of education, as an illustration
of the affect of economic decision on regular Americans, effects not observable
by studying financial statements, or bottom-lines.

Whew.

Roger & Me is a strong, persuasive, grim, and especially, a
groundbreaking work of aggressive documentary filmmaking. The film has its own
distinct identity and is a definitive work of American working-class
cinema—be it viewed through liberal or conservative eyes.

Though completely overshadowed in the wake of Moore's literary success and
Oscar-winning performances, Roger & Me stands as a superior film.
Despite being fairly grassroots and rough around the edges, its arguments are
far less heavy-handed, its presentations less manipulative than its modern
counterpart, Bowling for
Columbine. The picture has genuine heart and compassion for its subject
matter, and that is a rare thing indeed, of all films.

The Verdict

Absolutely not guilty. Not even guilty for the full-screen treatment.

This is a reasonably priced DVD release of a great film. Its social
relevance, smart-alecky entertainment, intellectual interest and modest price
tag should ensure its place on even the most politically conservative
aficionado's DVD shelf.

Or stack. Or pile.

For those miffed, annoyed, put out, or otherwise disgusted by Moore's
current media tomfoolery, the court well advises the exploration of this
previous work before writing the man off completely.